


What's Up, Pussycat?

by blackmountainbones



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Bringing Back the Boosh, Cats, Crack, Cracky fluff, Fluff, Getting Together, Jealousy, Prompt #1: Animals, Weed, cat magic, cats do not obey the laws of physics, feline jazz enthusiasts, idiots to lovers, seriously these guys are so dumb they need a cat to help them admit their feelings for each other, shameless self-insert, which is the closest i get to true fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 02:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19122628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmountainbones/pseuds/blackmountainbones
Summary: Naboo's shaman friend, The Stoned Enigma, needs a cat sitter. When Vince volunteers for the job, he expects that he and Dizzy Gillespie the Jazz Kitty will get along famously. Instead, Dizzy immediately bonds with Howard, becoming Vince's rival for Howard's affections.





	What's Up, Pussycat?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the jazz kittens that were up for adoption some time ago. When Dizzy Gillespie the jazz kitten was featured on our Discord server with the comment "Howard's would totally have a cat named after Dizzy Gillespie", I, the owner of a cat named Dizzy, got excited.
> 
> This is a shameless self-insert, which is all BobSkeleton's fault (she knows what she did). I am stoned, I am a literal shaman, and I also have a cat named after Dizzy Gillespie.... how could I not write myself into this fic?

Vince was proud of Naboo.

Despite being over 400 years old, Naboo had finally made a friend. Sure, his friend was a feral, androgynous American Shaman called The Stoned Enigma who was permanently stoned and had an obnoxious accent and even more obnoxious laugh, but Vince was happy that Naboo was finally taking his advice and had made a friend he _didn’t_ hate. Everyone, Vince thought, should have a kindred soul to keep them company in life--Vince had Howard, after all, and Naboo was finally following their example of a deep and beautiful friendship by finding a friend of his own. Vince considered himself a good influence on his friends, and was satisfied that the tiny, stoned shaman had finally taken his advice to heart and found _his_ kindred soul.

Though it seemed that The Stoned Enigma, or Stoney, as they preferred to be called, was currently having an existential crisis, over a _cat_ of all things. Vince sighed and took another hit of the blunt they’d been passing. Drugs, he considered, certainly made other people’s existential crises easier to deal with.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Stoney wailed. “My poor, precious Dizzy! She’s getting on in years; she would never survive a teleportation to the 7th dimension!”

“Have you considered finding her a foster home?” Naboo asked, matter-of-factly licking the blunt he was rolling.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Stoney said. “But she’s a shaman’s familiar, you know? She’s got magic! She can’t go to just _any_ home. Normal humans just wouldn’t understand. They’d freak out the moment she starts crying _Woe, woe, woe!_ in the middle of the night. She’s not evil or possessed, she’s just lonely and needs cuddles!”

Naboo nodded in commiseration and sparked the blunt he’d been rolling. “Tell me about it. It’s weird enough that Bollo is an ape; people get extra freaked out when they discover he’s magical, too!”

“Bollo not weird,” Bollo protested, plucking the smoking blunt from between Naboo’s tiny fingers. “Bollo normal ape. Shamans is weird, not gorilla.”

Vince was already high when Bollo passed him the blunt, but he took a couple of puffs anyway. Vince liked cats--he understood them on a soul level, ever since he’d been raised in the jungle by Jahooli the panther. “Your familiar is a cat?” he asked dumbly, passing the blunt to The Stoned Enigma.

Stoney’s stoned brown eyes opened wide--well, wide for someone who was constantly, well, stoned. “Yeah! Her name is Dizzy.” They fumbled a bit with their hip pouch, finally removing a phone with a cracked screen and waving it in front of Vince’s face.

The cat in the photo was well cute. She was small but plump, and though she was a common grey tabby, her stripes were unusually bold, making her look like a little grey tiger with a white mask around her nose and mouth. The patterns in her fur were nearly symmetrical, except for the black smudge of her nose. That one little detail made her look confused.

“Awww, she has a little dizzy face,” Vince squealed.

Stoney looked down at the photo with parental pride. “Yeah, she does,” they agreed. “Though I was going through a jazz phase when she was born, you know, listening to a lot of Dizzy Gillespie. Luckily, she grew into the name.”

“You had a jazz phase?” Vince asked, incredulous. He squinted at The Stoned Enigma, who had even worse fashion sense than his best friend, the self-styled jazz maverick Howard Moon, though in a completely different way. Instead of favoring the ill-fitting cords and rollnecks and porkpie hats that the self-styled Jazz Maverick preferred, Stoney favored a hideous combination of cargo shorts that showed off their hairy legs, a crop top that did nothing to hide their belly, and a series of obnoxiously-printed tiny little hats that made their bushy hair look abnormally large. They looked like some kind of bicycle punk, which Vince supposed was fitting, considering that they worked as a bicycle messenger (though Vince suspected that was merely a cover for their actual source of income, which was delivering designer drugs door-to-door by bicycle).

“It was a dark, dark time,” Stoney said enigmatically, blowing out a large cloud of smoke.

“Naboo, why don’t _we_ take care of Dizzy while Stoney is in another dimension?” Vince asked. Vince was a simple man, but he had a well-developed sense of irony. He liked the idea of adopting a jazz cat, mostly because she was certain to hate Howard, despite her jazzy name.

All animals hated Howard. Vince had known this fact since the Zooniverse--all the animals talked shit about Howard, which had endeared him even more to the lonely, hapless man he’d considered his best friend since childhood. Surely a man so disliked by so many creatures needed a friend to show him the bright side of things, and Vince was certain he was the man for the job. Despite having been a zookeeper, Howard didn’t like animals--and animals _definitely_ didn’t like _him_. In fact, Vince often overheard the animals talking about how much they hated the small-eyed bastard, but knowing what  he did about Howard’s fragile ego, he’d never told Howard.

Naboo smiled and agreed. “Why not?” he asked enigmatically. “We’re a magical household and no one here will be disturbed by a creature howling WOE! In the middle of the night. After all, we have Howard.”

Howard was Vince’s best friend, and Vince loved him perhaps a bit more intensely than friends ought to love one another, but Vince had to admit that Naboo had a point. He loved Howard, but the man was prone to fits of fugue and self-pity that usually caused him to stay up late, listening to depressing jazz ballads and bemoaning his misunderstood existence.

“Really?” Stoney asked, their hangdog expression brightening a bit. “You’d take care of my Dizzy for me?”

“Sure,” Naboo said, puffing on his hookah.

Stoney squealed and threw their arms around the tiny shaman. Vince was proud to see that Naboo accepted the hug, only looking a little bit uncomfortable with the enthusiastic display of affection.

Yes, Vince considered, he certainly _was_ a good influence on his friends.

 

 

Dizzy was even cuter in real life.

“She gets a can of tuna, twice a day. And don’t forget to ‘nip her!” Stoney instructed.

“Nippers?” Vince asked. “Is she having kittens?” He eyed the cat suspiciously--she was plump but didn’t look pregnant…

“No,” Stoney said, extracting a large bag of some herbal substance from their hip pack. “She needs her catnip at least once a day.”

Dizzy immediately leapt out of carrier and started for the bag of catnip.

“Better hide this from her,” Stoney said proudly. “She’s a fiend for the ‘nip. I forgot to put the ‘nip away one night last week, and she ate the whole thing, then got the munchies and killed all her toys.”

Dizzy preened, looking proud of herself.

Vince reached out to pet her. “What a pretty little princess!” he cooed.

The traitorous feline reached out a paw and swatted. _Don’t touch me, human,_ she warned.

“Oi!” Vince grumbled, sticking his bleeding finger into his mouth.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Stoney said, looking confused. “She’s usually a very friendly kitty.” To illustrate their point, they reached out and ruffled the cat with a bicycle-grease stained hand. Dizzy leaned into the touch, rumbling softly.

 _It’s true,_ Dizzy said, narrowing her eyes at Vince as she was pet by her shaman. _I don’t trust you._

“What?” Vince asked, curious. “All animals like me.”

 _It’s the hair,_ Dizzy muttered. _You look like some kind of crow boy. And I eat crow for breakfast._

Before Vince could respond to that, Stoney looked at their watch and excused themself. “Well, look at the time,” they said. “If I don’t get going, I’m going to miss my teleportation. And the Shaman Council are dicks about rescheduling interdimensional teleportations!”

With that, they left the flat, leaving Dizzy and Vince to stare and growl at one another from across the couch.

Improbably, Dizzy the Jazz Kitty took an immediate liking to Howard the Jazz Maverick.

Vince was confused. This was not the natural order of the universe. Animals, even the small, domesticated, and harmless, all hated Howard--and all animals, no matter how wild, predatory, and vicious, loved Vince. Yet every time he approached the cat, Dizzy would growl and swat at him, though she seemed perfectly content to sit in Howard’s lap and purr up a storm as they listened to _Bird and Diz_ on Howard’s ancient record player. There was only one explanation for this: the world had gone wrong.

The whole situation was beginning to give Vince hives, and they still had ten more days of cat-sitting to go.

 

 

Vince was able to ignore this perversion of the natural order of things until that evening.

So what if Dizzy hated Vince but liked Howard? Vince didn’t consider himself a jealous person (though admittedly, self-reflection had never been his strong suit), and Howard had been hated by man and beast (with the exception of Vince himself) for his entire life. Vince figured that Howard deserved a little affection, even if it was from a ten-pound tabby that had been named after a jazz musician. Perhaps the experience would make Howard a little less resistant to the occasional physical expressions of affection that Vince sprinkled on him. He certainly did not shout “Don’t touch me!” when Dizzy began kneading his lap and grooming his forearm with her little pink barbed tongue.

But then Dizzy tried to follow Howard to bed, and Vince put his foot down, insisting that she would shed all over his clothes, which, admittedly, were liberally and haphazardly spread over every available surface of their shared room. Howard reluctantly agreed, but then the howling started.

 _Woe, woe, woe,_ Dizzy cried. The sound seemed impossibly loud for such a small creature.

“Are you sure we can’t let her in, just for one night?” Howard asked, seeming sad.

“No cats in the bedroom,” Vince protested.

“But she sounds so _sad_ ,” Howard said. “We can’t leave her all alone out there.”

As far as Vince was concerned, they could leave her out in the street for all he cared. “You don’t understand how cats work, Howard. If we let her in tonight, she’ll want to sleep in here _every_ night.”

Dizzy’s howls increased in sound and intensity as if the little creature had understood Vince’s words. _Woe, woe, woe._

Even Vince had to admit she sounded well pathetic. When Howard looked balefully at him from across the room, Vince relented. “Fine,” he huffed. “But she’s not allowed on my bed.”

Howard’s smile lit up. “That’s fine by me, little man.” He opened the bedroom door and scooped Dizzy up into his arms.

Dizzy immediately stopped howling and started purring as Howard carried her over to his bed. She immediately curled up on Howard’s soft chest, right between his succulent middle-aged man boobs, which made Vince feel a pang of some uncomfortable emotion that he refused to acknowledge. Her purr was loud obnoxiously loud and the opposite of soothing, at least to Vince.

Howard, on the other hand, was easily lulled to sleep by her rumbling. Soon, he was snoring in time to the purrs emanating from the cat curled on his chest.

 

 

Vince was such a ray of sunshine that most people did not suspect that he suffered from terrible nightmares. It was as if, during sleep, all the fears and bad feelings he so fastidiously ignored during the waking hours, all came to life.

He’d awoken from another such dream, a variation on the recurring nightmare he had about Howard turning into a crab in which Howard turned into a brown and vicious tabby-striped cat who insisted on being called Miles Davis--and who _hated_ Vince with the passion that rivalled his passion for jazz. It was terrifying, and when Vince woke, he immediately, as he often did, sought the comfort of Howard’s bed and Howard’s warm, long body, and soft snores to lull him back to sleep.

Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that Howard was already sharing his bed with a ten-pound ball of fury and fur in the form of a cat named after Dizzy Gillespie.

Vince was reminded of this fact by the five long, deep scratches that the evil cat left on the hand that Vince had tried to rest on Howard’s soft, broad chest. Vince shrieked, Dizzy hissed, and Howard awoke to a spitting, angry ball of furiously flying fur and black hair.

“What is going on here?” Howard demanded sleepily, wanting to know why his slumber had been disturbed.

“It’s all _her_ fault!” Vince insisted in a voice that was nearly hysterical. “I had another nightmare, and when I tried to crawl into your bed, she attacked me!”

 _It’s_ your _fault,_ Dizzy growled. _You tried to kick me out of Howard’s bed because you want him for yourself!_

Vince ignored the cat’s baseless accusations. “That cat is evil, Howard! I’m serious!”

Howard was still half-asleep and completely confused. He slung a long arm around Vince and rested a large hand on Dizzy’s head, petting and cooing at the two distressed creatures in his bed. “Now Vince, Dizzy is not evil. She’s just missing her shaman. Anyone, cat or human, would be upset if their favorite person had to go to across the universe on some shaman business. You understand, right?”

Vince nodded, his eyes full of tears. He understood more than Howard even knew. Admittedly, his favorite person had never ventured so far as another galaxy, but as far as he was concerned, Denmark had _felt_ like a galaxy away.

“And you,” Howard admonished Dizzy before she could hiss something horrible at Vince, “need to be nice to Vince. He’s my best mate, you know. I care about him very much, as much as you care about The Stoned Enigma.”

The evil cat had the sense to look properly reproachful. She made a plaintive sound somewhere between a purr and a meow, then curled up on Howard’s chest and fell asleep.

Vince rested his head on Howard’s shoulder and snaked an arm across Howard’s soft belly before slipping into unconsciousness.

As for Howard, he lay awake a while, feeling unusually warm and content until sleep overtook him, too.

 

 

It got worse the next morning--Howard started singing to the cat.

Vince was awakened at the ungodly-early hour by Howard’s voice, melodically singing a little song he’d made up for the cat. “Dizzy girl, Dizzy Dizzy baby, Dizzy girl, your breath smells like gravy!”

Vince emerged from the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, careful not to reopen the scratches on his hand. “Ugh, Howard, it’s too early for this shite. Lay off that caterwauling, yeah?”

Howard and Dizzy, who was cradled in Howard’s arms, both looked offended. “I shall not, sir! Dizzy is a beautiful creature who deserves to be serenaded!” Howard protested, scratching the cat beneath her chin.

Dizzy closed her eyes and purred smugly. Vince hated her more than ever.

If, a week ago when he had masterminded this whole farce, someone had told Vince that a deceptively-cute cat with a possessive streak were to replace him as Howard’s favorite living creature, Vince would have called them mad and informed them that they’d gone wrong. He and Howard had known each other almost their whole lives, ever since Bryan Ferry had sent Vince away from the jungle to get a proper English education. From the moment Howard had saved Vince from being bullied for wearing the girl’s uniform by getting beat up himself, the two had been inseparable. Neither man nor beast nor monster had managed what Dizzy the cat had done.

And she knew it too. _He’s mine now, crow-boy,_ she muttered.

Vince crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Dizzy appeared unperturbed by Vince’s frustration, securely coddled as she was in Howard’s big Northern arms.

Howard, oblivious to the bitter rivalry between cat and man for his affections, fixed Dizzy a fancy salmon pate while serving Vince a bowl of cold cereal instead of the elaborate breakfasts Vince was used to.

 _See,_ Dizzy bragged around a mouthful of salmon, _Howard likes me better._

Vince slipped into a sulk that lasted the rest of the day.

 

 

The nightmares didn’t stop. In fact, they got worse.

Luckily, Dizzy did not try to attack Vince when he inevitably slipped into Howard’s bed after another of his disturbing dreams. Instead, the crafty cat grew more subtle in her manipulations. She began throwing up in Vince’s shoes. One morning, Vince even woke to her nuzzling his face softly.

At first, Vince had thought that Dizzy had finally realized just how easy Vince was to love. Unfortunately, as his mind began to catch up with his body, Vince realized that she was not nuzzling him with affection--the little beast was actually _eating his hair._

Vince screamed and woke Howard, who did not seem nearly as perturbed by the situation as Vince thought he should have been.

“There, there,” Howard comforted. “I’m sure she was just confused. Maybe she thought your hair was string. Cats are prone to eating string, you know.”

“Howard,” Vince whinged, not comforted at all, “are you saying my hair is stringy?” If _anyone_ had stringy hair, it had to be Howard, whose rarely-washed hair often clung to his forehead in stringy clumps.

 _You idiot,_ Dizzy muttered as Howard sputtered and tried to undo his faux-pas, _your hair isn’t made of string, it’s made of crow. And I eat crow for breakfast, dinner, and a midnight snack._

Vince wailed. And poor Howard, who was at a loss to comfort him, had finally had enough.

That evening after the shop closed, Howard insisted on having a mediation between himself, Dizzy, and Vince.

“What,” he asked the two confused creatures staring at him balefully, “is going on here?”

“Dizzy hates me,” Vince whinged.

 _It’s true,_ Dizzy meowed. _You’re shallow and you have bad hair._

“You’ve gone wrong, Vince,” Howard insisted. “Dizzy doesn’t hate you. All animals love you. You’re like Mowgli in a disco jumpsuit.”

If it was possible for a cat to roll her eyes, Dizzy was rolling them right now. _I do hate you_.

“She _does_ hate me, Howard,” Vince wailed. “I don’t understand it! Animals are supposed to hate _you_ , not _me_.”

Howard leaned down and looked Dizzy in the eyes. “Dizzy,” he said very seriously, “please be nice to Vince. He’s my best friend, and I love and care for him very much.”

Dizzy looked cross.

“Of course, I love you too,” Howard continued, “but I love you in the way that a man loves a cat, and Vince in the way that a man loves another man.”

Dizzy looked perturbed but Vince was so elated to hear Howard admit that he loved him that he immediately launched himself at his friend. “Howard,” he asked, “do you really mean that?”

“Well, uh,” Howard stalled, realizing his mistake, “Of course I love you, but uh--”

Vince didn’t wait for him to finish that sentence. He launched himself at Howard, all groping limbs and wagging tongue.

Dizzy sat and stared for a bit as the two men snogged on the couch. Then she jumped up onto the armchair and curled herself into a little ball, satisfied with herself and a job well-done.

After all, she was a shaman’s familiar and had a bit of her own magic. She’d known instinctively that Vince was in love with Howard, but was too proud to act on his emotions. He’d convinced himself that he was too good for a man like Howard--at least until something knocked him down a few notches and made him realize just how much he needed Howard.

As for Howard, he’d needed someone to show him that he was worthy of being loved before he could act on his long-standing pathetic pining crush on his best friend. Had he dared to do so before Dizzy had shown him he was lovable, he would inevitably have been crushed by Vince’s pride and failed.

Yes, Dizzy knew, she was a powerful kitty. Luckily her small size and cute little dizzy face made it easy to convince the two idiot humans committing acts of perversion on the couch otherwise. Such deception only made it easier for her to carry out her task without the annoyance of human interference.

 

 

A few days later, Vince and Howard and Dizzy were cuddled into a pile on the couch, listening to Prince albums. The three of them had discovered that Prince had enough of a jazz-funk soul to satisfy Howard and Dizzy’s preferences for jazz, while the music was drenched in enough 80’s electro-pop kitsch for Vince to appreciate him too.

Stoney arrived just as the last song on _Sign O’ The Times_ faded into static and wasted no time gathering the plump little cat into their arms. “How’s my pretty little princess?” they cooed.

“She was a darling,” Howard offered, just as Vince said, “Kind of a brat at first, but then we got along alright.”

“That sounds like my Dizzy!” Stoney crowed. “Now where’s Naboo? I got some new drugs from the planet Xerxes Minor of the 7th dimension that will really blow his mind!”

With that, The Stoned Enigma took off down the hall to Naboo’s room with their cat and their luggage, which, from the smell of things, appeared to be full of exotic interdimensional intergalactic psychoactive substances.

Vince and Howard lounged on the couch for a while longer, holding hands and cuddling contentedly. As much as the two men enjoyed cuddling together, they both felt something was missing. In only a week’s time, they had grown used to sharing their space--and each other--with a small, purring cat.

Turning to Howard and biting his lip, Vince asked, “Howard?”

“Yes, little man?” Howard answered.

“Have you ever thought about getting a kitten?”

Howard hummed. “I do miss her already,” he admitted.

“Maybe we should get two,” Vince considered. “I don’t want our cat to be lonely all by herself.”

“Yes,” Howard agreed. “It was rather pathetic to listen to Dizzy cry _Woe, woe_ whenever she was left alone.”

And that was how Vince and Howard became the proud owners of two cats: one sleek, black, slim thing named Gary Numan, and a plump brown tabby named Nina Simone. The two cats loved their humans--almost as much as they loved each other.

Shaman’s familiars or not, all cats have a little magic. It didn’t take long for Gary Newman and Nina Simone to convince Howard and Vince to finally get  a bigger bed, and at night, the two men and the two cats snuggled each other. Neither man nor beast ever had to sleep alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> Dizzy's character is based on my cat. She is a Gemini, so she's incredibly verbal, and will literally cry "Woe!" when she is feeling ignored. She has a bad habit of eating my hair when she wants me to feed her. Luckily, real-life Dizzy is much sweeter than Booshiverse Dizzy. She loves catnip, eating flies, belly rubs, and getting kudos.


End file.
